


Through the Mist

by fictionalheart



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Pete's World
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:37:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2509697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalheart/pseuds/fictionalheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Tony begs the Doctor to take him to see the environment that spawned his favourite gothic novels, the Doctor and Rose find themselves headed to a 19th century world ridden with alien invasions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Mist

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to tkross for listening to me go on about this and for making a very helpful suggestion.

Letting out a frustrated sigh, Rose plops down beside the Doctor on the sofa, drawing her legs up beneath her. “Mum isn’t happy with you.”

“What did I do now?!” the Doctor whines. “Is this about last weekend? I told her I didn’t insult her cooking on purpose. It’s just that her banana soufflé was a bit on the deflated side, and you know how important it is for banana…” He looks up to find Rose biting down on her lower lip. “What?”

“It isn’t that, Doctor.”

“Well then what is it?”

“Apparently it’s the books you’ve been reading to Tony.”

“What? _Frankenstein_? That’s a perfectly harmless book for a young man of his age!”

“He’s seven, Doctor.” He frowns, and she knows he doesn’t see the problem. “He’s a bit young for murder and revenge.”

“But… it’s a classic! And he asked me about it. He wanted to know about brilliant women like his sister who’ve impacted the world of science, and since he loves to read so much, I told him about Mary Shelley and how she wrote the first science fiction novel. When she was nineteen! It’s a positive thing to tell a kid, Rose!”

Rose pats him on the shoulder and bites back a laugh. “Did you read the book to him though or tell him about it?”

“Both… He wanted to know what her novel was about, and so I paraphrased parts of it, but then he wanted me to read the whole thing to him. He never said he was afraid though. What does Jackie have to be upset about?”

“Well apparently he’s been telling the stories to his friends, and they’ve been having nightmares. One of their mums called Mum to complain today.”

The Doctor frowns. “Why would they be afraid?”

“Well, apparently he’s been telling everyone that the stories are real. And apparently a little boy gets killed in the story.”

The Doctor cringes. “He’s seven, Rose. I highly doubt he has trouble distinguishing between fact and fiction.”

“Mhmm, but Tony isn’t confused about that. He seems to have remembered the story we told him about the lupine wavelength haemovarioform at the original Torchwood and decided that since werewolves were real, then Frankenstein’s ‘monster’ and various other creatures from the other stories you’ve been telling him about might actually be aliens that snuck on to earth in the 19th century…”

“Ooooh and inspired the revival of the Gothic literature movement!!”

“Yep.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant!” The Doctor hops off the couch and rushes off towards their bookcases.

“You don’t think he’s right?”

“Welllllll, no. But he could be. Those books are a bit more… developed in this universe.” He pulls a copy of _Dracula_ off the shelf and holds it up. “Almost suspiciously so, really. Look how thick this is! It wouldn’t hurt to check it out. It’s nice of Jackie to alert us to a potential alien threat. I’m surprised she didn’t go straight to Pete, though I suppose she needed us for the non-linear nature of the problem.”

“That isn’t why she told me about this.”

“Oh. Does she want us to talk Tony out of his theory? Because he could be right, you know, and I don’t want to discourage him. The world needs more perceptive Tylers.” He wiggles his eyebrows.

Rose laughs. “Noooo, apparently Tony's been bugging her about going back to Victorian London himself to figure it out."

"On his own?"

"Apparently the TARDIS likes him and he figures he can drive her as well as you can, what with all the bumping and crashing you put her through."

The Doctor sniffs. "Rude."

"I'm only quoting, Doctor. And to be fair, that one time you did crash her was when Tony was on board."

"That was because one of the levers was sticking!"

Rose pats him on the arm. "'S okay, Doctor. We all have bad days."

"It wasn't a bad day! It was a technical malfunction!"

Rose cocks her brow at him and he grins. She relents, sticking out her tongue, and a smile spreads across her own face as she thinks back on that day. There hadn't been any "technical malfunctions" but she'd certainly done her best to make sure  the Doctor was distracted while Tony took his afternoon nap.

Her gaze slips to his lips at the memory, and her breathing slows, but then she remembers her mum's call and clears her throat.

"Anyway. We know Tony can't travel without us, no matter what he says, but Mum thinks he won't stop talking about it until he gets to see it with his own eyes. So, she wants us to take him back to Victorian London to show him that nothing was out of sorts.”

“Has Jackie ever been to Victorian London? because I can assure her that even without an alien invasion, something was always out of sorts. And technically, we’d have to pop back to Geneva in 1816 to see what was going on with the Shelleys first, and I promise that area was no better than London became in the second half of the century. Let me just tell you about the underground horticulture scene that exploded after Lord Byron tried to turn cabbages into fireworks-”

“Doctor!”

“Sorry. Wellllll, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have Tony along now that we have to travel there anyway?”

Rose smirks, “Have to?”

“Of course! We can’t leave a potentially dangerous situation unexplored, now can we?”

“Of course not!” Rose attempts to mirror his mock-serious expression but bursts into a smile at the glint of mischief in his eyes as he comes to stand in front of her, hand held out and fingers waggling in invitation.

“Allons-y?”

“Hmmm, well I was thinking we could maybe have dinner first?”

 


End file.
